Yahoo! Has The Right Mobile Priorities

[Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]

I spoke with Yahoo! in response to my WIM bullet about them in my recent US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009 to 2014.  They wanted to correct how I had represented their mobile strategy.  I spoke with Adam Taggart, Head of Global Product Marketing for Yahoo! Mobile and Zealous Wiley who heads up communications for

Mobile.  They stressed that Yahoo! has three primary goals this year for mobile:

1) To continue to develop more mobile applications to allow for greater use and utility of Yahoo! via mobile devices.

2) To extend relationships with current Yahoo.com users into the mobile realm.

3) To improve synergies between the Yahoo.com and the Yahoo mobile experience, so that the two environments reflect the same experience

I would agree with Yahoo, that this sounds like a solid approach to mobile, particularly because today the mobile Yahoo environment does not fully harmonize with the one on Yahoo.com.  In fact I think that Yahoo's greatest challenge is creating a unified experience of Yahoo! for consumers (and advertisers) across its myriad properties and applications.  For example, not all of the applications integrated into Yahoo! Mail as part of Yahoo's Open Strategy are available through other Yahoo properties like My Yahoo! and Y! Toolbar. 

So, I've amended my comments about Yahoo! to reflect that it is not specifically a challenge with its mobile strategy that makes it a potential fit with Apple.  Rather the current struggle to better unify the customer experiences across all of Yahoo!, coupled with declining online ad sales will leave Yahoo! seeking a suitor.

Comments

[Digital Death]

Yahoo! does not have a mobile strategy at all. After they dumped Yahoo! Go 4, they also dumped all other mobile applications (with the exception of the oneSearch client and an iPhone app).

They let the whole Yahoo! Go team go and focus on m.yahoo.com which is nothing extraordinary, in fact it's not working properly on many phones.

They are working on integrating mobile ads for years now but still haven't come up with anything at all.

The neither have a vision and have managers whose only goal is to reduce the headcount.